Latham & Watkins has appointed head of financial services and regulatory David Berman from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan’s London office, returning to the firm for the recruit six months after hiringlitigation partner Martin Davies.
Berman only joined Quinn in January this year and was previously Macfarlanes head of financial services regulation and a partner for nearly eight years. In his early career, he was a managing director at an global investment bank where he held senior legal, compliance and regulatory roles.
Berman starts at Latham on 1 August.
His practice focuses on representing financial institutions on regulatory, compliance and governance-related matters and advisingbuy-side and sell-side clients on transactions and remedial work. Berman’s recent work includes advising on the Financial Conduct Authority’s Senior Managers and Certification Regime and the Market Abuse Regulation.
Latham’s London managing partner Jay Sadanandan said Berman was a perfect fit for the firm’s strategic growth in London and the continued expansion of Latham’s global financial services regulatory practice.
Global co-chair of Latham’s financial regulation practice Rob Moulton said: ‘We set our sights on establishing the preeminent global practice with the ability to tackle the most complex regulatory matters of our financial institution clients. David has a tremendous market standing and will be a great addition to our existing strong team.’
Since hiring Ashurst’s global co-head of financial regulation in January this year, Latham has been expanding its global financial regulation practice, most recently hiring Linklaters’ financial regulatory partner Daniel Csefalvay, after a decade working for the Magic Circle firm.
Latham now more than 2,400 lawyers in its offices located in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the United States.
This year, after a period of nine years with no partner exits, Quinn lost London-based litigator Paul Friedman to national firm Gunnercooke, alongside Latham hiring Davies in the firm’s litigation practice.
Quinn has also hired in Europe. Stephen Mavroghenis and Miguel Rato joined the firm’s Brussels office from Shearman & Sterling. Mavroghenis was previously the practice group leader of Shearman’s worldwide antitrust practice while Rato was a litigation partner focused on competition law issues.
In recent years, Latham made a string of high-profile City appointments including Slaughter and May finance partner Sanjev Warna-kula-suriya, Allen & Overy banking head Stephen Kensell and most recently Olswang’s commercial litigation partner Ian Felstead.
London office co-head of Quinn Emanuel Richard East told Legal Business: ‘David has unfortunately decided that his practice is best suited to a full service law firm. We are very disappointed to see him go, but wish him very well.’
‘He was the first partner we’d hired in London from a non-contentious background as we viewed his financial services advisory practice as being a good fit with our existing buy side litigation expertise. We thank him for having the courage and the entrepreneurial flair to give it a go.’